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Badland

No idea how this Badland happened, it's a very clever idea and seems so obvious in hindsight that it's entirely possible that both were thought up independently. The Indian version from Ogilvy in Mumbai was in Cannes 2008, while the Brazilian version got silver in promo and activation 2011. Ooops!

Lets compare and contrast. Cannes 2011 seems to be the year of "seen it". Sadly.

Flashback to Cannes lions and the Gold winning PR entry called Tramp A Benz which consisted of a man who hitchiked through Germany, but only in Mercedes Benz. He blogged about it, he facebooked it, there was even a book printed in the end showing all the nice drivers who picked him up. He was Stefan Gbureck, a former Hugo Boss model and 'emerging street photographer and performance artist from Berlin'. It all seemed to be his idea, even if he used the classic Mercedes line "The best or nothing" on his brown paper cardboard as he hitched.

WWW.TOSAY.IT "Public Interventions" displayed in the Behance gallery, the artists say their project is all about "text, streets and internet as an artistic medium"... but what I see is a very familiar line, and funnily enough a very similar type treatment. What are the odds?

I recently ran a Google+ advertisement on Facebook that got all of my campaigns suspended. - Great.
The message from Failbook said the following:Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.
P.S; Facebook - You Suck.

Interesting. What part of the TOS did a Google+ ad break, do you think?

This is under "banned" though, surprise, it wasn't! When the Norwegian 'dating' company Victoria Milan launched in the Swedish market advertising "make life exiting, have an affair" it was quickly dubbed the "cheaters site" and had people talking everywhere. Swedes, mostly known for topless sunbathing and bikini teams around the world (I know that makes no sense) were all shocked by the idea, and a whopping 206 individual complaints arrived at RO (The advertising ombudsmans) offices demanding that the campaign be stopped for moral reasons as it encouraged infidelity.

No, this isn't exactly the same, at all but the similarities are funny. Top image - Hasan and Partner campaign for the Clio Awards appearing Feb/March, 2011. Please don't be mad at me Ami - I'm easily amused today. ;)

Currently a company called Vanity Barcodes are strutting their stuff in various press releases where founder Yael Miller from Jersey gets to explain all the fun barcodes they can offer. We recall a company called "Barcode Design" in Japan that won a Cannes Titanium for this in 2006, and so does everyone else. Though even back then, it was badlanded as Pfadfinderei in Germany did design for record labels that had fun with the codes earlier too. I'm not badlanding this to be mean, I'm alerting you designers out there to a new skill you'll need - plus it's fun! I bet you've been doing this to barcodes in you sketches for years already.

Knullträdet.se a.k.a F**K TREE won a Silver Lion in media this year, the 'campaign of the year' nomination in Sweden, and now the dubious honor to be included in the history of Badland.

You see, we wrote about the Durex Sex Tree idea here when Ad student Henrik Düfke at Miami Ad School showed it to us back in 2009. I hope he's the guy you hired, Starcom, but I don't see his name anywhere on the credits list, so I guess not huh? Shame shame. ;)

Here's a pretty classic visual Badlander that seems to have popped into creative teams head this spring.

The print ad fort Samsung computers, which shows goldfish swimming to the disc icon, was created by Impact BBDO in Dubai this february. Tagline: "leave nothing behind" - store it all on Samsung HDD.

The print ad for Beko which contains tanks all trekking toward the USB device in the corner of the TV-set, is created by TBWA, Istanbul and ran in April/May 2011 - headline is "The USB recordable TV." .

A Cadbury's ad with the line "Move over Naomi, there's a new diva in town" references the supermodel Naomi Campbell's infamous "diva"-style tantrums, but Naomi feels certain it's the color of her skin that's described as she says to the Independent.

"I am shocked. It's upsetting to be described as chocolate, not just for me, but for all black women and black people. I do not find any humour in this. It is insulting and hurtful."

Creatives are influenced by the world around them and pop culture. Proof with these two horror movie inspired ads--One for Dirt Devil and a series for B&Q. At least they spoofed the classics instead of one of the new films in the genre. ;)

Directed by Andreas Roth, the spot titled "The Exorcist" to mark the Dirt Devil vacuum away the horror film of the same name to demonstrate the power of their products.

The other day, when my way too cool for school teenage niece asked me if I liked Urban Outfitters, I bit my tongue not to roll into a Badland tirade. I do love the store, you can get all kinds of crap-you-never-knew-you-totally-needed there (fashions? Not so much), but I have seen this sort of thing play out too often.